ACADEMIC AUTOCRACY
I
While presidents of great colleges delivered baccalaureate sermons
and partook of graduation banquets, the two wops waited in jail, with
the grim sentence hanging over their heads--to “suffer the punishment
of death by the passage of a current of electricity through your body
within the week beginning Sunday, the tenth of July, in the year of
our Lord, One Thousand Nine Hundred and Twenty-seven.” A singular
perversity in the Governor of a great Commonwealth, a reluctance to
grant even the smallest concession to hated defenders of hated wops:
he would not say whether that sentence was to be postponed, but would
leave the whole world to speculate for a month, and to imagine the
execution. Said the defense committee in its June bulletin: “Torture
of the body practiced in the Middle Ages is nothing compared with the
torture of the mind and heart upon these two innocent men and their
families and friends.”
The law specified that ten days prior to the date of execution
condemned men should be moved to the death cells in Charlestown prison.
Since there had been no reprieve, this law applied to Sacco and
Vanzetti. The authorities of Norfolk County were anxious to get rid
of them, on account of the expense; and so upon the first minute of
the first day of July, the sheriff and his deputies entered the cells
of the two men in Dedham jail, and ordered them to dress. No reasons
given, no time allowed to pack their books and papers; they were
shackled, and taken out into the darkness to a waiting automobile. With
a dozen armed men riding behind and before, they were taken to Boston,
through the sleeping city, and lodged in the “death cells.”
No one told them what this procedure meant, and they took it to mean
immediate execution. Vanzetti’s first action upon his arrival was to
start writing a farewell letter to the comrades. From now on they
would live in solitude, close to the electric chair. Their friends
cried out in horror--foolish sentimentalists, who had not yet brought
themselves to face the thought of that electric chair! But the ruling
class of Massachusetts knew what it meant to do, and went ahead. Not
until after the move to the death cells did the Governor condescend to
postpone the date of execution for a month.
The Lowell Commission held its first session on the last day of June.
They met in the Governor’s Council chamber in the State House; a large
room, done in white, high-studded, Doric style, with rich mahogany
furniture, and soft velvet carpets. The desks are arranged in a circle,
one continuous desk, with swivel chairs; overhead, a heavy chandelier,
in which the history of New England’s technical progress had been
recorded: first whale oil, then coal oil, then kerosene, then gas, and
now electricity.
The first meeting of the Commission was “to determine procedure,” the
papers said. The first procedure determined was secrecy, and it was
very determined; not merely were spectators and newspaper reporters
to be excluded, but witnesses and lawyers had to agree not to discuss
on the outside what they said on the inside. A bitter disappointment
for the defense committee, whose one hope was the education of public
opinion. “It is very bad,” said Vanzetti. “It means they kill us.”
On the fifth of July the Commission began to hear witnesses, and
the friends of the defense received more shocks. The Constitution
of the United States provides that every man accused of crime
shall “be confronted with the witnesses against him.” But these
important gentlemen were going to examine witnesses, while Sacco
and Vanzetti stayed in Charlestown prison, ignorant of what was
going on. Furthermore, the Commission reserved the right to exclude
defense counsel from the room whenever they saw fit, and to limit
cross-examination as they saw fit. When the rules of legal procedure
suited the convenience of the three important gentlemen, they would
apply, and when the rules were inconvenient, they would be set aside.
Joe Randall, reporting developments for labor papers in New York, was
one of the crowd which haunted the State House corridors and besieged
the doors of the executive chambers. So he heard gossip not meant for
“radical” ears; and after the third day he came to the apartment on
the north side of Beacon Hill, and sat down by Cornelia and took her
hand and said, “Grannie, I’m sorry--you’ve got to brace yourself for
another blow.”
Cornelia winced; her lips trembled, in spite of her best efforts.
Poor old lady, she had had more than her share of blows. The young
reporter’s heart ached for the pitiful shrunken figure in the big
Morris chair. “What is it, Joe?”
“Your dolly is stuffed with sawdust, Grannie.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, your great Mr. Lowell is just another ‘Web’ Thayer.”
“Oh, no!”
“Take my word for it, and get ready for the worst. The newspaper
fellows fool the public, because that is what they are paid for,
but they don’t as a rule let themselves be fooled. This Commission
consists of Thayer, Katzmann, and Fuller all over again--with a little
touch of Rugg and Wait and the rest of the supreme court judges,
for dignity. They know that the men are guilty, and their purpose
is to find evidence to justify the verdict. Mark my words, Grannie,
before they get through they’ll do everything that Thayer has done,
even to misquoting testimony and falsifying the record. Only one
difference--Mr. Lowell will see to it that they have better manners.”
“You are too optimistic,” said the sarcastic Betty.
II
If it took Cornelia two weeks to realize that these predictions were
right, it was only because she could not bring herself to admit the
plain meaning of events. Witnesses emerged from that “star chamber,”
and kept their promise not to talk to reporters; but they talked to
their friends, including the defense committee. So came pictures of
three elderly gray-heads, impatient, bored and irritated--partly on
account of the weather, for it was stifling summer heat, but more
especially by witnesses trying to get them to believe what they
considered a wicked tangle of perjuries and deceptions.
Fuller was a politician, and used to making pretenses; but none of the
three commissioners had ever been anything but an autocrat, and it was
impossible for them to conceal their annoyance at the efforts of men
and women to persuade them that notorious dynamiters and bandits were
anything else. Lowell had already made the pronouncement that Sacco and
Vanzetti were not really anarchists--that was just a camouflage their
friends had invented for them! And what Lowell said became the truth,
for his two colleagues regarded him as on the whole the greatest man in
Massachusetts, and therefore in the world.
Betty turned out to be right on the subject of his manners. He could
be courtesy incarnate when he wished to; but this was not one of the
times. He interrupted the defense lawyers, and badgered them like
schoolboys. The fact that William G. Thompson had been a trial lawyer
for thirty-six years did not save him; nor the fact that he had been a
federal prosecutor, nor the fact that he had been a Harvard lecturer.
Said Lowell, “I don’t know whether you are trying to reach the truth or
not. I assume, of course, that you are.” Said Thompson: “I am not going
to put any question to this witness or to any other witness in the case
unless it is assumed by the Commission that I am here _not_ to deceive
the Commission. There has been a good deal of imputation and it is very
painful to me.”
A. Lawrence Lowell was an international and constitutional lawyer, but
so far as concerned criminal trials he was a complete novice; yet he
would show William G. Thompson how to handle witnesses, and did so.
He took charge of the procedure, as he had done with everything all
his life. He had a tremendous notion of his own powers, and was not
there to have anybody tell him anything. His purpose was to protect
the institutions of New England, now under attack by vicious radicals.
The impulse to support those in authority was as automatic in this
university president, as ever it had been in any of his stern forbears
who had carried a hickory staff at divine worship, and cracked the
knuckles of the inattentive and the polls of the somnolent. (Judge
Grant often nodded at these hearings, but that may have been a device,
of course.)
When “Web” Thayer made his appearance at the doors of the executive
chambers, to render an accounting of his stewardship, every other
person was immediately ushered out, and no one but his three fellow
club-members asked him any questions, or heard his answers. Did he say
why he had misquoted the Sacco-Vanzetti record in his decisions, or how
he had come to invent and to cite bogus testimony? Did he admit that
he had referred to his victims as “anarchistic bastards”? Did he admit
that he had called them “sons-of-bitches”? The record of the hearings
was silent on the subject.
When Fred G. Katzmann appeared, and Thompson tried to cross-question
him, and pin him down as to some of his actions which the defense
lawyer thought were not quite up to standard, even for district
attorneys--then it was the business of the Commission to protect this
former official. They had promised him that he would only be detained
one hour, and he was impatient to get away. Exactly like Rupert Alvin,
he suffered from failures of memory whenever he was in a tight corner.
The defense lawyers tried to get something definite on the business of
Mike Boda. The police had had Boda on April 20th, only sixteen days
before they had arrested Sacco and Vanzetti; yet they made a mystery
out of Boda. Was it not true that he was a very small man? And did any
witness at the trial describe a small bandit? Katzmann would not be
trapped. “Are you asking to test my memory? Look at the record.” It so
happened that at this very hour, in a room immediately adjoining, the
Governor was demanding of one of his visitors: “If Vanzetti was a good
man, why did he associate with Boda?”
III
Too late, as usual, the friends of the defense began to acquire
information concerning the members of this Commission. Robert Grant
was one of the bitterest Italian-haters in New England. He had put
it into a book, virtually labeling them a race of pickpockets. To a
librarian in Washington he had expressed his violent opinion that
Sacco and Vanzetti ought to be killed. To John F. Moors and Professor
Morison of Harvard he had expressed disapproval of any one taking issue
with the verdict at the trial, or with the subsequent decisions. Yet
he considered that there was nothing in the way of his acting as an
impartial arbitrator!
“Bob” Grant had begun life as a popular novelist in the genteel New
England style. The rising plutocracy of America had resorted to his
works to learn the circumstances under which toothpicks should not
be used, and similar lessons in the conduct of a good life. He had
been awarded a small-salaried position as probate judge, where he had
displayed an unusual talent for sarcasm, and an air of being much too
good for mundane affairs. He was now seventy-five years of age, and
was retired from service on the bench, which left him free to pass
judgment upon Italians. A frail, pathetic, querulous, old man, he sat
in the stifling heat of midsummer, suffering greatly, sometimes closing
his eyes--but that does not always mean that a judge is not paying
heed. Judge Grant heeded with an air of boredom, of extreme suspicion,
and discourtesy of a kind which does not come naturally, but has to
be cultivated as a fine art. When he ventured an opinion, it was of
an infantile nature. “Why, Mr. Thompson, you find everybody wrong!
You say harsh things about Mr. Katzmann, who seems to be an estimable
gentleman!”
The elderly judge’s attitude was curiously revealed in the matter
of Mr. George U. Crocker, formerly treasurer of the City of Boston,
who told about the behavior of Judge Thayer. Mr. Crocker had never
been introduced to Thayer, but had had the judge’s acquaintance
forced upon him in the University Club; Thayer had come to his table
at breakfast, uninvited, and sat down and compelled Crocker to hear
him scold and denounce the “arnychists,” and read passages from his
decisions: “There, I guess that will hold them!” Finally Mr. Crocker
had instructed the head-waiter not to permit Judge Thayer to join him
at table. When Mr. Crocker told the Commission about this, Judge Grant
inquired, “Mr. Crocker, do I understand that you are repeating what was
said to you at a social club by a fellow member of that club?” In other
words, the secrets of a gentleman’s club were more sacred than the
lives of two wops!
President Stratton, of “M.I.T.,” as it was known, was the youngest
of the Commission, being only sixty-eight. He came from Illinois--a
great handicap in Boston, which considers Worcester the far west. He
was a physicist, and had risen by competence in science--including the
science of knowing the rich and what they wanted. Four years ago he
had been taken into the sacred circle of the Back Bay, and now he would
have needed tremendous moral courage to oppose a domineering person
like President Lowell. A capable administrator but with no reflective
capacity, his social opinions had been indicated by his banning a
speaker against militarism from the Y. M. C. A. of his great institute.
IV
A. Lawrence Lowell had been born to that apex of greatness in Boston,
which permits the fortunate one to be eccentric. He rode about
Cambridge in an elderly high motor-car painted a brilliant Harvard
crimson, and decorated with as much polished brass-work as a yacht. He
carried his papers in an old green bag, and wore a coat-skirt which he
switched as he walked; Heywood Broun, who had seen his figure in the
Harvard “yard,” wrote that he “ambled sedately to a hanging.” He had a
face of cold virtue, and from all persons less important than himself
he exacted the most rigid conformance to propriety. He was wholly
lacking in enthusiasms, and appeals to him to recognize the beauty of
anarchist character froze on the speaker’s tongue. He cultivated both
in writing and in speaking a style which for dullness could not be
exceeded in the college world. A stiff legal mind, made wholly out of
precedents, he had facility and self-esteem, and could be extremely
genial when he wanted something, such as an endowment. On the other
hand, if a common person said or did anything out of the ordinary, he
would reveal a remarkable talent for ungraciousness.
Injustice did not exist in the world; it was a delusion contrived by
cunning agitators, and they were not going to fool the mighty mind of
the President of Harvard University. A characteristic moment early
during the hearing, when the witness Pierce, a shoe-worker who had
refused to identify Sacco as the bandit, told how he had lost his
job at the factory for this refusal; he was “fired,” and one of the
convicting jurymen had taken his place. Also another witness had lost
his position for refusing to identify. “What does this tend to prove?”
demanded the irritable Judge Grant. The answer of the lawyers was,
“It proves duress.” Said Lowell, with contempt which took in lawyers,
witnesses, and his own colleague: “Oh, don’t you see, they claim this
was all nothing but a frame-up.”
Infallibility was his prerogative upon three different counts: as a
millionaire, as a college president, and as a Lowell. There was a
popular quatrain about the city of Boston, as “the home of the bean and
the cod, where the Lowells speak only to Cabots, and the Cabots speak
only to God.” Never for an instant did it occur to this great man to
doubt that he could wade into a mass of complications and determine the
truth in a month. With complete insouciance he would make statements
of fact about crime and criminals, which experts knew to be nonsense.
“This cannot be so” ... “they do not do that” ... and so on.
V
The fallibilities of academic autocracy were strikingly revealed in the
reception accorded to an eccentric lady who was sent over by Governor
Fuller to tell her story to the Commission. Let “Tootsie Toodles” be
her name--it was no less melodious. The newspapers had called her
a “mystery witness,” but she was no mystery to the defense--on the
contrary, an open volume, ancient and much handled. She was, according
to Lowell’s euphemistic phrase, “not unimpeachable in conduct”; also
she was an hysterical fantast. Prior to the Dedham trial, she had come
to the defense lawyer, and told an elaborate story, offering to repeat
it on the witness-stand. But there was some dispute about the price,
and she went to the prosecution and offered to tell a story for them.
She went back and forth between the two sides, until she had ruined
herself with both--they realized that she was mentally irresponsible.
Ranney, the assistant district attorney representing the government
at the Lowell hearings, knew all this, and admitted the woman’s “not
unimpeachable” record. He grinned at the scene; when the three old
gentlemen were not watching, he made motions of wheels going round in
his head--a schoolboy sign for an insane person. There came a former
employer of Tootsie, Mr. Jackson, and the commission asked him, “What
of her mentality?” The answer was, “She’s twelve ounces to the pound.”
President Lowell of Harvard inquired, “What does that mean?” and the
witness replied. “She’s not all there.” The great educator enlarged his
vocabulary considerably before he got through with this adventure--it
was a sort of slumming expedition for him. They brought in the former
chief of police of South Braintree, who said that he had known Tootsie
since she was born, and she was “what you’d call a nut.” But he was
mistaken; Mr. Lowell would never have called any person or anything by
a word of one syllable.
The three important gentlemen, looking for any sort of evidence
to save the good name of their Commonwealth, received Tootsie--it
would not be proper to say with open arms, considering her “not
unimpeachable conduct”--but with that polished and perfected elegance
which blue-blood gentlemen display to all ladies when they meet them
socially. When Tootsie stood up, they all stood up, and bowed--it was
like a court reception, or a Harvard commencement.
Her story was that she had known Sacco in the year 1908, when they had
both worked in the Rice and Hutchins shoe-factory--he was a “laster,”
she said. She had seen him on the street in South Braintree on April
15th, 1920, a few hours before the crime, standing near the alleged
bandit car. She heard a man whom she declared to be Vanzetti say to
him, “Hurry up and finish this job. I have to be back in Providence at
three o’clock and dig clams.”
There were slight errors in this story. It wasn’t Providence to which
Vanzetti had to get back; they don’t dig clams in Providence, so it
must have been Plymouth. Also it was a slip about Sacco having been
a “laster” in the Rice and Hutchins factory in 1908, for in April of
that year he had landed in America, a lad of seventeen who had never
seen a shoe-factory. He had gone to work carrying water to laborers in
Hopedale, and it wasn’t until four years later, after his marriage,
that he had learned shoe-work.
All this, of course, was known to Thompson, and he set out to establish
it. His first question was: “What time did you say that Sacco first
worked in the Rice and Hutchins factory, what year?”
And Tootsie, who knew what he was driving at, started up and began to
scream. “What is the idea of my coming up and talking with you when I
come in here to-day to have my character overhauled? Has my character
got anything to do with what I saw and what I heard?”
Said Lowell, majestically: “You will oblige the Committee by answering
questions. We won’t allow your character to be assailed.”
Said Tootsie, louder yet--so loud that for the first time the newspaper
reporters could attend the sessions through the tightly closed doors:
“My character is just as good as yours, or Sacco’s or Vanzetti’s, or
any of that gang that you have got down there and what they do. I will
not allow my character to be overhauled.”
Said Lowell: “Nobody is overhauling your character.”
Said Ranney, the assistant district attorney: “Answer that question.”
So Tootsie replied: “1908.” She added: “If I am wrong I will say I am
wrong.” Even the members of the Commission smiled at this. But their
appreciation of it was superficial; they could hardly be expected to
realize that Tootsie, entirely by accident, had provided the best
summing up of the Boston Brahmins to be found in the literature of the
world. If I am wrong I will say that I am wrong! But don’t _you_ dare
to say it!
For an hour Thompson read passages from Tootsie’s earlier statement,
inconsistent with the story she was now telling; and always her answer
was that the stenographer was crooked and had written the wrong
answers. She became more and more excited, and screamed louder and
louder, until Lowell stopped the proceedings, and Judge Grant, greatly
agitated, toddled across the room, exclaiming, “I will get her a glass
of ice-water.” He trembled so that he poured a part of it down her neck.
Ranney came out of the room disgusted, and told the reporters that
Tootsie was “so loud” and “so unreliable” that Katzmann had refused to
use her, for fear she would “break up the case.” So the reporters for
once had an “inside” story. They published it, to the annoyance of the
Commission, and also of Tootsie. She read, and set out forthwith for
the office of the Boston _Post_, a perfectly respectable capitalist
newspaper, strongly Catholic. She interviewed a reporter, and told him
that the stories were all wrong, that she believed Sacco and Vanzetti
to be quite innocent of the crime of which they had been convicted.
The person she had seen in South Braintree was the brother of a friend
of hers, who happened to look like Sacco. The _Post_ published this
correction; and the defense produced the _Post_ report before the
Commission, to prove what had happened.
The lawyers for the defense naturally took it for granted that the
absurdity of the whole affair was obvious. But when the report of the
Commission appeared, they discovered to their consternation that the
three elderly gallants had accepted Tootsie Toodles as one of their
reasons for sending Sacco and Vanzetti to the electric chair! Said the
greatest man in Massachusetts, and therefore in the world:
“The woman is eccentric, not unimpeachable in conduct; but the
Committee believe that in this case her testimony was well worth
consideration.”
VI
Two things the three elderly gentlemen desired ardently to do: one,
to prove that the defense at the Dedham trial had hired perjury; the
other to break the alibi of Sacco in Boston on the day of the South
Braintree crime. Everything which they did upon their own initiative
was directed to these two ends; and it was only while this was going
on that they failed to be impatient and bored. They had laid down the
program that they would themselves summon no witnesses except the
members of the jury, and Messrs. Katzmann and Thayer. But in the midst
of the proceedings they suddenly forgot this rule, and without warning
to the defense lawyers summoned to the State House two Italians, Bosco
and Guadagni, who had testified at the Dedham trial that Sacco had had
lunch with them on the day of the crime.
The Italians were asked to repeat their story, which owed its certainty
as to date to the fact that it was the day of a banquet given to
Williams, editor of the _Transcript_. Guadagni, a socialist, had been
rebuked by Sacco and the others for proposing to attend an affair in
honor of a militarist. Guadagni was the orator whom Cornelia had met
during the Plymouth Cordage strike, a friend of Vanzetti’s from the
beginning, and original organizer of the defense committee; he had
become one of the editors of an Italian daily paper, _La Notizia_.
A ruddy-cheeked little man with sharply-pointed black beard and
mustaches, speaking English with an accent, he told the three great
gentlemen of the Governor’s Commission what he remembered; and then
to his astonishment he became the object of a persistent attack by
the President of Harvard University, who thought he had the Italian
trapped in a fraud. Ten days previously Lowell had consulted the files
of the Boston _Transcript_, and found that there had been no banquet
to Williams on April 15th; he had consulted the files of the _Gazzetta
del Massachusetts_, an Italian weekly, and both papers agreed that the
banquet to Williams had been on May 13th. Williams, now in Washington,
had been consulted, and agreed that that was correct.
An unhappy moment for the two lawyers, Thompson and Ehrmann,
representing the Sacco-Vanzetti defense in its later stages. They had
had nothing to do with the Dedham trial, and if there had been any
“framing” of witnesses, they did not know it. They had received no
warning in this matter of Bosco and Guadagni, and so, of course, they
were helpless. “Might there not possibly have been two banquets?”
suggested Thompson; but Lowell waved that inept suggestion aside with
a peculiar little gesture of the hand, a series of quick motions,
characteristic of him. “Do not disturb the operations of this mighty
brain,” it seemed to say. Aloud he replied, “No, no, no, it cannot be.
I have investigated the matter.” The lawyer, greatly distressed, turned
against his own witnesses, saying that Mr. Lowell was a man of honor,
and the witnesses should admit the whole truth.
A trying situation for two humble self-educated strangers, there in the
stately executive chambers under the golden dome. Said Guadagni: “If I
am not crazy, there was banquet on fifteenth April. If I not tell truth
I go jail.” He insisted that he would find a record of it, and Lowell
waved him aside with a gesture of disgust; all these wops were alike,
there was no truth in them. “Very well,” said he. “Bring the record
to-morrow morning if you find it.” And the pair went crestfallen away.
VII
But next morning early they turned up at the law office of William G.
Thompson, staggering under the weight of an enormous tome, the bound
volume of Guadagni’s daily paper, _La Notizia_, for the year 1920.
They laid it on the lawyer’s desk, open to the issue of April 16th,
and translated word by word a half column account of the banquet to
Williams on the previous day. The dinner had been a humble one, and the
report said, “A more formal dinner will be given.” The two lawyers,
who had been sunk in the depths of despair, now suddenly felt like
schoolboys. “This saves the men!” exclaimed Thompson. “This is our case
right here!”
The two middle-weight Italians, assisted by Gardner Jackson, lugged
the huge tome to the State House with the golden dome, and sat all
morning outside the tightly shut white doors. It happened to be the
two-hour session with Tootsie Toodles, and they listened to the comedy,
and shared the hilarity of the newspaper reporters. When Tootsie
rushed out, screaming, they were ushered in, and the tome was spread
out on the council table, and Guadagni offered to translate it for
Lowell--thereby giving offense, and being informed that the president
of Harvard University read Italian fluently. There was a long silence
while the three gentlemen read, more or less fluently; and finally the
President of Harvard University turned from the reading and shook hands
with the two Italians. “Gentlemen, I was under an impression which I
find was mistaken. I apologize.”
A stirring scene: the greatest man in Massachusetts, and therefore in
the whole world, apologizing to two wops! What more could two wops
want? Or two lawyers? Thompson advanced the idea that the Commission
should make some acknowledgment of the fact that the alibi had been
established. Trying to make something out of the incident for Sacco and
Vanzetti! But the great academic brain saw the ruse. That would come in
due time; that was an affair for deliberation. Lowell did go so far as
to say that he would give to the Governor an adequate account of the
evidence produced. But for the rest--no publicity! More quick little
waves of the imperious right hand. He reminded them sternly that they
were under pledge not to report anything about what happened at these
sessions.
Silence! Never so long as time endures must the populace know that the
University President of the Blue-bloods has been humiliated!
Some time later the defense got their copy of the stenographic record
of what had taken place, and they discovered thirty-two pages of the
attempt of Lowell to break down the testimony of Bosco and Guadagni,
but not a single line about the apology he had been compelled to make!
No reference to the dialogue that took place, nor to the argument of
defense counsel! There was a brief parenthetic note to the effect that
Bosco and Guadagni had brought in the files of _La Notizia_, but not
a word to show that the alibi testimony had thereby been restored to
credibility!
So was Joe Randall justified of his statement to Cornelia Thornwell,
“Your dolly is stuffed with sawdust!” Of his prophecy that the
haughtiest and most righteous blue-blood gentlemen would “doctor
the record,” exactly as “Web” Thayer, the vulgarian, had done! When
Cornelia heard that story, and got the full significance of it, she
went away to her own room, and sank down upon the bed and sobbed. It
became a sort of prayer: “Oh, God, let me die! Take me away! I am a
fool, and all my people are fools!”
VIII
In the meantime, through this hot month of July, Governor Fuller was
continuing the hearings in his own chamber in the same State House. “I
feel myself obligated to hear anybody they send”--so he declared; and
several times each week he motored up from his summer-home, escorted
by two police cars. The witnesses would file through his rooms, and
then go away in silence; a régime of secrecy modified by rumors and
whispers. If the witness was one who had testified at either trial,
the reporters would look up the previous testimony, and say that the
witness had told that same story to the Governor. If the witness
had said anything new that was injurious to Sacco or Vanzetti, the
reporters could get it in a round-about way. Otherwise they would call
it a “mystery witness.”
Each day the Governor’s impatience grew, and the pretense of
impartiality wore thinner. Ladies of refinement who had attended the
Dedham trial had the disagreeable experience of talking with a man who
made perfectly evident his belief that they were lying. Witnesses who
had one definite thing to tell would be challenged to tell some other
thing, and humiliated because they could not do it. Robert Benchley,
one of the editors of _Life_, came from New York to make statements
about the ravings of Judge Thayer at the golf-club of Worcester; to
his surprise he was challenged to point out one passage in the entire
record indicating that the trial had not been a fair one. Since
Benchley had never seen the record, he was “stumped”, like everyone who
interviewed the Governor. But he took the Governor’s advice and studied
the record; and then he took the trouble to write the Governor a
letter, pointing out many passages indicating unfairness. Like everyone
else who did this, he got no response.
Still stranger the experience of John J. Richards, lawyer of
Providence, Rhode Island, who had been United States marshal during
the war, and had arrested the Morelli gang, and had them all sent to
prison. He received a telegram requesting him to call on the Governor
of Massachusetts, and he came, at his own expense. He was asked,
abruptly, “What do you know about the Sacco-Vanzetti case?” He replied,
“I know nothing.” Said Fuller, triumphantly, “I thought so!” Richards
naturally wondered why he had been invited, and suggested that possibly
it might be because of what he knew about the Morellis and Madeiros.
Said the Governor sharply, “That matter is closed. The Madeiros
confession is an invention.” Then he proceeded to cross-question
his visitor: “Are you in the employ of the Defense Committee?” Said
Richards, much startled, “I am not. I know nothing of such a committee.”
Here was a former officer of the law, explaining what he believed was
the truth; and the supersalesman received him as a suspected criminal.
“What do you know about the South Braintree crime? Why did you wait six
years to come around and tell about it? Have you ever been in South
Braintree? How did they get you in on this Madeiros thing?” And so on.
Mr. Richards came out from under the golden dome in something of
a daze, and went to Ehrmann’s office. Rosina Sacco happened to be
there--tormented little woman, drawn and haggard, with her daughter
Inez, six years old, born after her father’s arrest. Richards listened
pityingly while she voiced her hopes in the Governor; afterwards he
said to the lawyer, “You might as well shut up shop. Those men are as
good as dead now. Fuller has no intention whatever of considering the
evidence on their behalf.”
IX
An author had written from California to the Governor, pleading
with him to go and meet the two alleged bandits, and judge their
characters. It was the author’s idea that no one could encounter the
soul of Bartolomeo Vanzetti and consider him a bandit. But the owner
of the Packard Motor Car Company of New England would show the author
a new line in souls. One morning the Governor left the State House,
and stepped into his car with police-officers, and sped away without
warning to Charlestown Prison.
Bart and Nick, as the sentences now stood, were to be executed on
August 10th, and were both in strict confinement; the little walk
across the prison yard which the prisoners got out of this interview
was their first glimpse of daylight for nearly a month. Both of the
men were on a “hungry strike”; they were going to starve themselves to
death, as protest against the secrecy of the Governor’s hearings. But
modern labor and suffrage agitation has established in the minds of
wardens and jailers the fact that human beings do not die of starvation
for a long time. Bart, on his seventh day of a fast, was able to walk
cheerfully across the prison yard to the warden’s office.
The Governor and the wop sat down together--no other witness. But
later on, of course, Bart told his friends about it. The Governor had
a question firmly fixed in his head, and which he used as a means of
“stumping” witnesses: “Why did not Vanzetti take the stand at the
Plymouth trial?” He now asked this question of Vanzetti. Since the
answer involved the whole story of Vanzetti’s radical beliefs, and his
relations to lawyers of Catholic and capitalist mentality, he was still
answering at the end of an hour.
The Governor had to leave then, because Lindbergh had come to Boston.
The Governor was due at a reception, but he promised to come back
and hear the rest of Vanzetti’s answer. He made his escape through
the warden’s home, running quickly to avoid the picture-snapping
newspapermen. They reported that he seemed greatly flustered; he
knocked off his straw hat while jumping into his car. Could it be that
a rabid anarchist had said something to offend the sensibilities of the
owner of the Packard Motor Car Company of New England? A picturesque
story, of which the newspapers would have made much more, if there had
not been the flying colonel, and also a million dollar prize fight to
be featured the next morning!
The great man came again, and talked with Vanzetti for two hours.
Like all salesmen, he had learned to be agreeable; he wore his fixed
professional smile, and shook hands with Bart at least ten times, so
Bart declared. That a man could “smile and smile and be a villain
still” was a thing not dreamed of in the philosophy of Bartolomeo
Vanzetti, and he poured out his heart, and explained his ideas--he took
the matter so seriously that he wrote a long letter adding things he
had overlooked. Bart told his lawyers he was sure the Governor would
not execute a man to whom he had behaved with such great courtesy. And
the lawyers also found the Governor’s manner encouraging. Said His
Excellency, genially, “I wanted to tell Vanzetti to eat!” And again,
“Isn’t Vanzetti an attractive man!”--it might have been a schoolgirl
instead of a supersalesman.
His Excellency also summoned Sacco to the warden’s office, and tried
to have a conversation; but this did not come off so well. Sacco was
polite, but not to be taken in by supersalesmanship. The conversation,
relieved of Italian dialect, ran somewhat as follows:
“Sacco, I want to have a talk with you.”
“There is nothing for me to say.”
“But I want your version of this matter.”
“I have not asked for a pardon.”
“But I would like to hear your story.”
“What is the use? You have your tendencies, and you could not see mine.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I am a poor man and you are a rich man, and we have
nothing in common.”
“But I was a poor man once. I worked in a rubber shop at seven-fifty a
week.”
“Yes, but now you are a millionaire, and your money thinks for you. I
have nothing to say.”
So the interview ended. Sacco was very gentle about it, and afterwards
he became a trifle remorseful. He said, “I didn’t treat him right. He
outdid me in courtesy. But I wanted him to know the truth. He won’t see
it the right way, and why should I let him fool himself?” Sacco was the
man with a formula; and for once the formula happened to fit.
Also the Governor summoned Madeiros to the warden’s office; and here
was the supersalesman handling a different line of goods. Madeiros
had taken the burden of the South Braintree crime upon himself, and
thereby put the ruling class of Massachusetts in an uncomfortable
position. Naturally, they would pay a price to get out of it. Said the
Governor--if the story of a prison employee may be credited:
“Madeiros, I understand that you are sore because you didn’t get a
square deal from the government.”
“Yes, sir, that is so.”
“The district attorney double-crossed you, I understand.”
“Yes, sir, he did.”
“Well, if that is so, I might do something for you. Of course, there is
nothing in this South Braintree story of yours.”
“What I told about South Braintree is the truth.”
“Oh! In that case I won’t do anything for you. You are guilty of two
murders!”
X
On the 25th of July the Lowell Commission heard arguments of counsel.
For five hours William G. Thompson analyzed every aspect of the case,
and if his speech could have been listened to by the thinking people of
America, it would have saved the lives of his clients. But the speech
was heard only by three elderly autocrats, one of whom had a tendency
to appear to be dozing, while another had great respect for what the
third was thinking. We may imagine the third thinking as follows: “You
are an able lawyer, and are performing an intellectual feat, but I do
not need you to tell me what to think.”
Not all the evidence in the Sacco-Vanzetti case had been discovered;
the defense would keep on finding it, up to within a few hours of the
execution. But most of it was now available, and it seemed as if the
Great Novelist who makes up history had been concerned to take every
item of evidence produced by the prosecution at the Dedham trial,
and wipe it out by a later discovery. Even to that cap picked up at
the scene of the crime, which the district attorney had striven so
hard to fit onto Sacco’s head, and which “Web” Thayer had striven so
unjudicially to force a witness to identify as Sacco’s!
The main point about this cap had been that it had holes in the lining,
and the “theory” was that the holes had been due to Sacco’s habit of
hanging the cap on a nail in the factory. There had been a great amount
of testimony on this point, and Katzmann had made the most of it in his
speech to the jury. In his later arguments before Thayer he had gone so
far as to say: “that alone was enough to warrant the conviction of the
defendant Sacco.” The issue had been carried to the Supreme Judicial
Court, and made the subject of a special ruling; after which Judge
Thayer had made both cap and ruling the subject of special emphasis. In
rejecting the last bill of exceptions, he had summed up the proposition
as follows:
“In the lining of that cap there were nail-holes, which the
Commonwealth claimed were made by the nail upon which this cap had been
hung. Now the Supreme Judicial Court has said, in the decision of these
cases, that that evidence was competent, because it tended to prove
that that cap belonged to Sacco; and if the jury should find such to be
the fact, then Sacco was present at the time of the shooting.”
Such had been the word of Supreme Justice on the matter of a ragged
and dirty “pepper-and-salt” colored cap with earlaps! A man’s life
had depended upon it, and depended upon it still! And now, before the
Lowell Commission came ex-Chief of Police Gallivan of South Braintree,
telling the true story, never before revealed. The cap had been handed
to him by the shoe company superintendent, and the chief had carried
it under the seat of his automobile for at least ten days, possibly
twice as long; he had made the holes in the lining, while looking for
some mark of identification; then he had passed the cap on to police
officer Scott; and neither Gallivan nor Scott had been put upon the
witness-stand, to tell the jury how those holes had come to be!
Why Chief Gallivan had been passed by as a witness for the prosecution
was obvious enough--he was too plain-spoken a man. To the Lowell
Commission he summed up the Dedham trial in one pungent formula; and if
the three old gentlemen had thrown out the whole record, and confined
themselves to Gallivan’s one formula, they would have earned the thanks
of posterity. Said the Chief: “The Government would put on a witness
and then the defense would rush in to offset it, and I guess Katzmann
was just as wise; he would dig up one to offset him. The case appeared
to be to see who could get the biggest crowd. In other words, to see
who could tell the biggest lies.”
XI
Also the matter of Vanzetti’s revolver, which was supposed to have
belonged to Berardelli, the slain paymaster. According to the “theory,”
Berardelli had dropped it, and Sacco had picked it up, carried it off,
and given it to Vanzetti. There was no evidence that Berardelli had
had his revolver with him at the time of the shooting--he had taken
it to a repair place, and there was no record to show he had got it
back. No one had seen him with a revolver at the time of the crime. The
sole basis of the “theory” was that Vanzetti’s revolver happened to
be of the same make as the one Berardelli had owned. The prosecution
had put on the stand an expert from the factory, who had been a former
federal agent, and had led the jury to believe that he thought the
two revolvers were identical. But now, before the Lowell Commission,
he admitted that he had felt prejudice at the trial, and that his
testimony had been misconstrued. Said the witness Lincoln Wadsworth:
“But I have felt that I had created the impression that there
was a possibility that that was the pistol. Well, that is just a
possibility.... There is just the one possibility in the number
of pistols a factory of that kind happens to make. There was no
distinguishing number so that you could tell that that was the pistol.”
The witness went on to tell about his interviews with the assistant
district attorney, and how the latter had failed to be interested in
having the truth made clear:
“But Mr. Williams did not seem to want to have that at all, so that
I just let be on it. And then in the court-room I felt sure I would
have a chance to say the same thing that I have said here, but when
the time came to be cross-examined I simply was not, that was all, and
I went down on the records, as I thought, and still think, that while
not a direct statement that that was the pistol, it might lead to the
impression that that was the pistol.” And then, summing up the whole
matter: “There are thousands of times more chances that it was not than
that it was.”
So it went, with detail after detail; impossible to find a single one
that stood the test of time! Every one of the prosecution’s “star”
witnesses was ruined. Mary Splaine had told Henry Hellyer twice that
she did not see the faces of the bandits, and the detective had written
it down at the time--for use of the shoe company and the insurance
company, and their allies, the police and the district attorney.
Goodridge was a horse thief, his very name a perjury; he had sent two
men to the electric chair to escape a jail-sentence, and the district
attorney and the judge had refused to allow this to be brought before
the jury. Pelzer had told many persons that he did not see the bandits;
so had “Fainting Lola” Andrews. Both of them had made affidavits to
this effect--and then taken them back, so that you might believe them
either way, or neither.
Not one rag of evidence to cover the naked prejudice of three elderly
autocrats! The collapse became so complete that it was a matter for
jesting; there was even a haberdasher, to visit the prison and measure
the left hand of Sacco! Mary Splaine had based her identification
of the bandit upon his “good-sized left hand”--seen at a distance
of eighty feet for a period of one or two seconds. Now came the
haberdasher, testifying that Sacco’s left hand was smaller than normal.
Governor Fuller’s way of meeting that detail was to take Mary Splaine
out on the street and invite her to describe a man in an automobile
at the proper distance. But, alas, he did this in front of the State
House with the golden dome, and there was not any cobbler-shop to cut
off Mary’s view at the end of one or two seconds; nor was Mary up in
the second story, looking down amid the wild excitement of a bandit
raid, in imminent peril of shots.
There had been a million words of the Dedham trial testimony, and few
persons had ever digested it all; Cornelia Thornwell, who had been
studying it for six years, knew how hard was the task. Certainly the
Dedham jury had not done it, much as they might assure the Governor
and his commission that they had given a fair trial. Certainly the
Governor had not digested it, for when you referred to witnesses by
name, Mary Splaine and Lola Andrews were about the only ones he could
remember. Certainly the three old gentlemen had not done so, for they
made pitiful slips and asked helpless questions. But now came a great
lawyer, William G. Thompson, having sat up nights with those volumes
for several years, and presenting to the Commission a summary of their
contents.
For example, a study of Sacco’s sartorial career in South Braintree
on the 15th of April, 1920, as presented by the government witnesses.
At half-past eleven Lola Andrews had talked with him lying under an
automobile, wearing a dark suit. Five minutes later, a hesitating
witness thought he had seen him in front of a drug-store, dressed
“respectably.” Less than an hour later, according to another uncertain
witness, he was smoking a cigarette in the depot, wearing dark
“ordinary wearing apparel” and a soft black hat. When he actually shot
Berardelli, he had changed into dark green pants and a brown army
shirt, according to Pelzer. A few seconds later, he passed within Mary
Splaine’s vision, having changed to a gray woolen shirt, and wearing no
hat or coat at all; but having lost a cap at the scene of the murder,
although he had made his first appearance in a soft felt hat. A few
yards further on, Sacco had resumed his dark suit--if one could believe
the witness Goodridge.
There were many thousand words like that in Thompson’s argument; and
who could dispute the lawyer’s final statement, that Sacco and Vanzetti
had “never had the kind of trial required by English tradition and by
American constitutional law as a prerequisite to taking away their
lives”?
XII
Anguish in the hearts of all friends of the defense; they knew that
the decision was going against them--even while they would not admit
it to themselves. Pitiful the plight of hard-working and law-abiding
lawyers, who had made all the proper moves, and won the chess-game a
dozen times over--and now their opponents would dump the board and
throw the chessmen into their faces! While Vanzetti sat in his cell and
wrote memories of his mother, and Sacco composed a farewell letter to
his son, men and women whose hearts were too tender for this grim world
thought up frantic new schemes to move public opinion, and raced about
like ants in a nest which has been stepped on.
Jessica Henderson motored Cornelia Thornwell to New Haven, where lived
Mrs. Berardelli, the widow of the slain guard. With them went Musmanno,
and a Mrs. Florence, who had testified at the Dedham trial, that Mrs.
Berardelli had said to her that the hold-up would never have succeeded
if her husband had had his gun with him. (It was the gun Vanzetti was
supposed to have picked up after the murder.)
The group now appealed to the woman’s sympathies, and she agreed that
it would not help either her dead husband or his widow and orphans to
take the lives of two men who might possibly be innocent. She consented
to send a telegram to the Governor, appealing for clemency. “Write it
now,” said Mrs. Florence; but the woman said for Mrs. Florence to write
it, she would be satisfied with whatever they sent. So Mrs. Florence
and the party drove to the nearest railroad depot, and wrote a message
and sent it, and it made a front-page story in the newspapers next
morning.
But it took the enemy only a few hours to counter that move. They
came to the woman and frightened her, and the Boston newspapers
carried a story to the effect that the telegram had been sent, not by
Mrs. Berardelli, but by an unknown woman from a railroad depot. The
ladies made another trip to New Haven--but only to discover that Mrs.
Berardelli wouldn’t “have anything more to do with it.” Returning to
Boston, the ladies called upon the Associated Press representative,
explaining the circumstances, and asking him to correct the error.
The response of the Associated Press was to put on the wires all over
the country the statement that Mrs. Berardelli declared she had never
seen the telegram which had been sent in her name. It happened to be
strictly the fact; but it wasn’t quite the truth!
Edward Holton James was a New Englander of the old sort; he lived in
Concord, just across the field from the home of Emerson, which possibly
had affected his mind. He was a nephew of Henry James, the novelist
who wrote like a philosopher, and of William James, the philosopher
who wrote like a novelist. His wife was a Cushing, and wealthy, so
he had everything that a citizen of Concord could have to make him
respectable; but it didn’t keep him out of jail.
Mr. James had spotted certain flaws in the “theory.” He had noted the
fact that the so-called “bandit-car” with the bullet-hole through
the door had been in the hands of the police for hours before any of
the numerous examinations had revealed the conspicuous bullet-hole;
also he had measured the “Coacci shed,” and proved that you couldn’t
drive two cars into it, as the “theory” required. Now he went down
to South Braintree to reproduce the events of the hold-up, and prove
that some of the witnesses could not have seen what they claimed. But
the selectmen of South Braintree were not going to let the streets of
their town be used for Bolshevik propaganda if they knew it, and they
arrested Mr. James, in spite of both his ancestry and his money.
And then a little later Beltrando Brini had a bright idea: if the story
he had told at the Plymouth trial was fiction, then he was a perjurer.
He had told the story to the Governor, and had not been believed; so he
drafted a letter to the Governor, asking to be arrested, and he took
it about among the other alibi witnesses, and fourteen of them signed
it, including Bosco and Guadagni, the two editors. Trando delivered it
at the State House, and when no policeman came for him, he went back,
with his mother and half a dozen of the other witnesses. It was near
the end of the case, and the corridors were crowded with detectives and
secret service men, with swarms of reporters--a sensational scene. The
Governor was not in, said the secretary; and took the youth off into a
room by himself for a “grilling.” Who had sent him, and what was this
scheme for publicity? “This hurts you more than it helps.” And when
Trando undertook to explain, “Don’t try to make a stump speech; the
place for that is the Common.”
Said Trando, “I tried to speak on the Common yesterday, and I was
stopped.”
“Don’t try to be a hero!” sneered the secretary. Heroes were not wanted
at the State House, and Trando could not get arrested. Too bad he did
not know about the room full of booze in the cellar! If he had told
about that, he might have got his desire. As it was, he went away with
tears in his eyes, his mother sobbing on his arm.
XIII
And yet there were moments of hope. Impossible to believe that a great
business man and statesman could be such a hypocrite! Members of the
defense committee came to see him, having heard the wild rumors,
started from the State House, as to the millions that had been raised
and expended for bribes. They offered to put their records at the
disposal of the Governor; they had raised some $325,000 in seven years,
and had vouchers for it all--bundles and bales of them stacked in a
closet. Gardner Jackson and Mary Donovan had worked for nearly two
years without a cent. The Governor was surprised to hear it--he had
been given to understand that they got fifty percent of every thing
they raised. Little Joe Moro, the secretary, had worked for thirty
dollars a week, and the only other wages paid in the office were for
typists. The Governor was cordial, he seemed to like Joe immensely,
shook hands with him several times--he was a good fellow, and
everything was all right, don’t worry!
But that was in the privacy of his office, the tricks of a
supersalesman; molasses catches more flies than vinegar. Publicly the
Governor said nothing, and the rumors continued to fly. Professor
Frankfurter had got fifteen thousand dollars from the New York _World_
for writing an editorial; he had got one hundred and fifty thousand
from the committee for writing the _Atlantic Monthly_ article. The very
dignified editor of the Springfield _Republican_ was accused of having
received twenty thousand dollars from the committee for one famous
editorial. The “State House crowd” lived in such an atmosphere of
cash payment that they could not imagine how gentlemen felt about such
matters.
Also they lived in an atmosphere of terror. It seemed as if there were
as many detectives as real workers under the golden dome. Assuredly,
there were more spies than there were friends of the defense; one of
them put on a Windsor tie and got himself regularly arrested with the
pickets. Every one who had anything to do with the case was shadowed;
servants would be offered money for the contents of trash-baskets. All
officials having to do with the case, the Supreme Court judges and
later on even the jurors, had guards on their homes day and night, and
wives trembled every time their husbands went outdoors.
There was fear; and there were newspapers printing headlines and
selling editions, making every bomb-scare into a gold mine. Relatives
of the Johnson family, the garage people who had testified against
Sacco and Vanzetti, had had their rear porch blown up while they
were in bed. That made a newspaper story, and helped to damn Sacco
and Vanzetti. The police decided that it was a bootleggers’ quarrel;
but that fact was not revealed--the bootleggers being such liberal
paymasters of the police. A threatening letter was mailed to one of
the witnesses, and this turned out to be a prank of some boys; the
newspapers published the letter on the front page, and never published
the true story. Such is journalism, which lives upon sensation, and
prints its enormous editions with blood instead of ink.
XIV
The Lowell Commission had finished its hearings and retired into
privacy to deliberate. But meanwhile the Governor went on hearing
witnesses. They streamed through his office, as many as thirty in one
day; all sorts of persons who claimed to have information about the
case. Many came secretly, and went away, their names known only to him;
they whispered into his ear, and he was supposed to sort out truth from
rumor. A hundred times over, in conversations and arguments, he would
show that he could not do it, that he had, in fact, no idea of the
difference. “Why, I heard it right here in this room!” he would say;
and that proved it true.
On the other hand, impossible to satisfy him with any evidence that
proved what he did not want to believe! He had got his mind fixed on
the Bridgewater conviction, which would prove Vanzetti an habitual
criminal. You pointed to Vanzetti’s eighteen alibi witnesses, all
decent working people, and the Governor would find it suspicious that
they talked so much about eels. “But where is the express receipt
showing that he got the eels?” The case seemed to hang on that,
so the defense set out to look for express records in Plymouth.
They discovered that the records, nearly eight years old, had been
destroyed. Incidentally, they discovered that a state detective had
already made an investigation, and ascertained that they had been
destroyed.
They decided they would outwit him, even so. They would look for the
receipts of fish-dealers who had sold the eels. Herbert B. Ehrmann,
junior counsel, went to consult Vanzetti in Charlestown prison. It
was hard for him to remember--he had been accustomed to buy fish
from several dealers in Boston. The lawyer went according to his
vague description, with Felicani for translator; they hunted at the
“fish-pier” in South Boston, but found no one who remembered selling
to Vanzetti. Joe Randall got another Italian--two gangs searching. At
last, after visiting seven Italian fish-dealers on Atlantic Avenue,
the “Guinney market,” they found one who said that “B. Vanzetti of
Plymouth” had been a customer of his. Had he any records? For a year or
two, yes--but seven years, eight years--no, no, giammai! He had changed
his partnership in the meantime.
But they argued--could they make a search? The life of two compatriots
might depend on it! Yes, there were old papers up in the loft. So up
they go, among dust and cobwebs, with an electric flashlight. Old boxes
of papers, in bad Italian script--sheafs of loose ledger leaves, but
the earliest date is January, 1920. “For God’s sake, haven’t you got
any before that?”
The Italian has got interested--it is a story! “There’s an old case,
maybe stuff in that.” A big box shoved under the rafters, tightly
nailed up. “Must have a hammer to open it.” Stacks and stacks of old
papers: and among them blocks of American Express Company receipts,
signed by the expressman, day by day as he called for shipments. And
the dates--here are some for 1919--and here is December, 1919! And in
the middle of the block, one reading: “B. Vanzetti, Plymouth, one
barrel eels!”
Hurrah! We have it! We have them licked! The date is December 20th,
which was a Saturday, the very date Bart claimed the eels had been
shipped, to be sure to reach him on Tuesday, and got ready for selling
the next day! And they are live eels, so the dealer says, you can tell
that by the weight of the barrel! Dead eels would be heavier!
Young fellows dancing in a dusty loft! Our wops are saved! They go back
to the office with shining eyes. They go to the Governor’s office. “We
have found the evidence the Governor asked for.” This to the private
secretary--the Governor himself is busy. “Indeed?” says the secretary.
No shining in those hard eyes! “When are you going to stop bringing
evidence?”
They will not trust the precious papers to him, but insist upon seeing
Wiggin, the Governor’s counsel. Then they go away, and wait--and
nothing happens; the next time they see the Governor, they mention the
matter, and he says, “What does that prove? What evidence is there that
Vanzetti ever received the shipment? I understand that the eels were
never claimed; they were frozen in the depot.”
Says Joe Randall, gnashing his teeth: “It is like that fairy-story we
used to enjoy when we were children--how the little tailor wooed the
king’s daughter. ‘Go slay me the dragon,’ says the king--so the hero
goes and slays the dragon, and comes back, but he doesn’t get the
king’s daughter. ‘Go slay me the three giants,’ says the king--so he
goes and slays the three giants, and comes back, but he doesn’t get the
king’s daughter. ‘Go slay me the man-killing boar,’ says the king--and
the longer the story, the more fun it is.”
XV
The supersalesman had evolved a regular set of formulas, by which he
challenged the witnesses who came to him. Of Italians he would ask:
“Are you an anarchist? Are you a friend of Sacco or Vanzetti? Are you
a member of the committee? Have you any friends on the committee?
Who sent you here?” To be “sent” was a sinister thing, a sign of an
elaborate conspiracy in operation.
For Americans the procedure was more subtle. The first question was:
“Have you read the record?” If you answered “No,” then you were
disqualified. The Governor had read the record, so he said. If you
answered, “Yes,” the question would be, “Where did you get it?”--for
the defense had only two transcripts of the full testimony, and two
or three copies of the “bill of exceptions,” usually called “the
record.” If you were able to convince him that you had had access to
any of these, he would say, “Have you interviewed the witnesses?”
And of course that would “stump” you; how could any one interview
the witnesses, when the lawyers for the defense couldn’t even get
the Governor’s secretary to give them the names and addresses of the
witnesses? You would answer, “No,” and the Governor would reply, “Well,
I know about this case, and you don’t.”
All that mass of complications--a million words of printed testimony,
and many times that much spoken into one human ear--and he really
thought he could carry it all! Serene, even jaunty, he would come into
his office, wearing his automatic smile, and greeting the reporters,
“Good morning, boys, a fine day!” He did not ask for help, and gave no
thanks when it was offered. Hjalmar Branting, a lawyer from Sweden, son
of the prime minister, came over to study the case, and devoted a month
to it, becoming certain that the men were innocent. He was granted
an hour, and the Governor spent five minutes talking about Sacco and
Vanzetti, and the rest talking about the market for automobiles in
Sweden. A thrifty supersalesman, making hay even while the thunder
rolled and the lightning split the sky!
The floods of mail poured in. Trucks came, bringing masses of
petitions; some thirty packages, registered, from France, representing
three million signatures, patiently collected at workingmen’s meetings.
They were burned in the basement furnaces, at night, when the heat
would not be troublesome. Messenger boys brought telegrams by the
bundle; they were sorted out, one kind for the newspapers, the other
for the fires. Said the private secretary: “Everybody wants those wops
executed, except people who don’t know how to spell their names.” He
gave out the letter of the Reverend Llewellyn E. Darling, of Grace
Evangelical Church of Everett, reporting that a vote had been taken
among his Sunday congregation, and it was unanimous in demanding
that the convicted men should die. “We believe,” wrote this Darling
Reverend, “that the source of the petitions for their release is
un-American and would eventually destroy the government of the United
States.” Comrade Jesus, on his golden throne above, rose up and gave
three cheers for the Red, White, and Blue.
XVI
Cornelia had put off visiting the State House; she would see what
happened to others, and judge the best way of proceeding. Now she asked
Henry Cabot Winters to arrange an interview; and he offered to go
along--a notice to a politician that she was still a member of a great
family, in spite of all her vagaries. The supersalesman would be polite
to her, but also he would be grim, for she was a dangerous woman. He
held her to blame for a great part of the publicity which this case
had obtained; he had visions of her spending secretly the Thornwell
millions in an effort to get her own perverse way.
Cornelia had never met him; he had been a name to her so far. Now she
sat in his chamber and studied those eyes, so cold, expressionless--a
curious thing, they made you think literally of agates. His face was
round, his head partly bald, his costume immaculate, his smile as it
were dead. He sat with his back to the window, so that in the matter of
vision he had the advantage over his visitors. A large mahogany desk;
a green blotter, with a few papers, a fancy bronze ink-stand, and a
little state flag on a standard for patriotism. A large room, done in
white, with large white doors and heavy carpet and a fireplace never
used. “I guess you have seen all this many times, Mrs. Thornwell,” he
said, respectfully.
Yes, Cornelia had seen it. “When I was a little girl, the old home of
John Hancock stood out there in front.” So they talked “Boston,” and
perhaps she would have done better if she had talked nothing else;
her social prestige was really the only thing that stood any chance.
In a chair at one side sat Mr. Joseph Wiggin, the Governor’s private
counsel, a Harvard man and a blue-blood, smiling and quizzical; he
would have conspired with her in that kind of enterprise, if she had
put it up to him in the right, “old Boston” way. To charm an automobile
salesman and persuade him to make a concession as a matter of social
favor, the right of an aristocratic old lady to have her feelings
spared!
Cornelia set out to tell about Vanzetti, and how well she knew him,
and what a fine man he was. The Governor listened, but soon tired of
it. “I haven’t the time to deal with backgrounds and psychology, Mrs.
Thornwell.” She tried to show him what backgrounds and psychology
meant. “Consider Nick. They tell us he went out and stole sixteen
thousand dollars, and then came back to his shoe factory and earned
thirty-seven dollars and eighty cents!” But she was rousing his male
combativeness. “They had to go on working in the factory,” he argued.
“They couldn’t have afforded to change their habits.”
Cornelia was studying the bland face and the strange expressionless
eyes. What sort of man was this? What motives would sway him? A
business man, of a simple type, used to facing simple problems, like
those of price; the proper rental for a building, or wages for an
employee, easy to decide; a man of action, not a thinker. Now he had
to weigh the souls of idealists, he had to estimate social forces--and
they were completely beyond his comprehension. “I am a plain man, Mrs.
Thornwell, not an intellectual.” She had started to tell him about
Bart’s studies, the books she had seen him mastering by patient toil in
the night; but she realized that this was an affront to a merchant of
motor-cars who had been studying markets and prices. Neither would it
do any good to praise the unselfish motives of the two social rebels.
That, too, would give offense to the man of money. “These men who don’t
believe in private property must be depraved,” he had said.
She told him about the two trials, and what she had learned about the
various prosecution witnesses. The Governor praised these latter;
“clear-eyed,” was his word. Said the old lady, “Their eyes may be clear
from the outside looking in, but assuredly they were not clear from
the inside looking out.” She told the long story of the prevarications
and waverings of these witnesses, as proved by the records of the
preliminary hearings, and by the Pinkerton reports. The Governor knew
of these reports now, but he did not know what was in them, and was
puzzled by details. He did not even know the names of some witnesses.
She spoke of Behrsin, and the Governor said, “Cursin, who is Cursin?”
But everything polite, according to good form; he heard her to the end,
giving few signs of impatience. “I will give careful consideration
to what you tell me, Mrs. Thornwell. I have great respect for your
sincerity, and thank you for coming to see me.” Bows and smiles all
round, a pleasant hour--and utterly, utterly futile.
“The case is completely indigestible to him, he can’t hold it in his
mind.” Such was the judgment of Henry Cabot Winters, legal expert,
as he walked with his mother-in-law down the long marble corridors.
“You have to know a great deal about it in order to know anything, and
Fuller doesn’t know anything.”
“What will he do, Henry?”
“He’ll take somebody’s word for it. He’ll think he is deciding, but his
mind will make itself up without his realizing it. That’s the way he’s
gone through life--landing on his feet like a cat. What I’m afraid is,
he has landed already, and facing the wrong way.” As he said this, the
great lawyer put his arm under the old lady’s, and held her steady as
they walked towards his car. “It comes to this, Mother--what I said to
Rupert last night: you can make a chauffeur out of a governor, but you
can’t make a governor out of a chauffeur!”